IV of water definitely necessary! Ha!
Our final day in wine country was bittersweet. We were all starting to feel quite overindulgent, but we wanted to live up our final hours! We had a low-key breakfast of toast, almond butter, fruit and hydrating coconut water before setting off for the day. Also 2 of the 4 mornings we went out running, which was a nice refresher!
Our good friends Lane and Genevieve spent 2 years in Cville while Lane attended Darden Business School. He went on to work for Gallo Family Wines and moved to California. We miss them! They were busy with a wedding over the weekend, but Lane arranged for us to have a tour of one of Gallo Family’s wineries – William Hill Estate.
We traveled over to Napa for the visit. The grounds at William Hill were stunning!
We were greeted by a glass of chardonnay to sip under a beautiful arbor.
We then tasted the flight, impressed more and more by each bottle.
We snacked on truffle popcorn and local olive oil in between sips
Benchmark is king at William Hill, and Kelly from the public relations office sent us home with a bottle!! I think we should save it for our 8th wedding anniversary, don’t you?
Kelly from PR and Kelly II, our tasting room hostess, gave us a great tour!
Luckily they only lost one barrel in last month’s earthquake!
After William Hill we stopped into the grocery store to pick up picnic ingredients.
We headed to Cline Cellars after my amazing Syrah the day before. It ended up being really hot, crowded, and buggy at Cline so we didn’t have the best experience.
But the cheese was good!
Later that afternoon we went to ship home some wine and beer from the trip. Tip for future travelers – Bodega Shipping Company was SO nice! And the shipping prices weren’t too bad either.
We had to pick one final vineyard as our last of the trip. There were so many more we never made it to! Must. Go. Back.
We drove a few miles outside of Sonoma to Gundlach Bundschu.
Yummy, but the crowds had picked up a lot in the thick of the holiday weekend, so we were in and out quickly.
Later that afternoon we met up with Kate, a blog reader/Instagram follower who happened to be in wine country the same time that we were. We met up for a drink before our groups went to dinner later that night. Blends!
We shared a tasting at Envolve and really enjoyed their wines – especially the Malbec!
Then we were off to our final stop – dinner at La Salette, a Portuguese restaurant.
My cell phone camera could not do the meal justice in the low light, but we had a romantic dinner on their patio with fantastic food.
Clockwise from the top: Fisherman’s stew (my entrée), pineapple balls (a dessert surprise for having to wait for our reservation table a bit!), tomato water (another surprise!), amazing cod cakes and our appetizer plate – a mix of tastes including goat cheese, fig bread, sausage, beans and almonds. Great meal!!
Our final morning, before departing for the airport, we ate at Café Sunflower on the Sonoma Square. I highly recommend it!! Great menu and beautiful courtyard out back. Waffle, eggs and tea!
We had a great, great time and can’t wait to plan our next adventure…even if it is many years away!
What a trip! I’m not sure I could handle all the wine, not that I wouldn’t try!!!
I can’t get over how beautiful wine country is!! Wow. Every day looks like you had PERFECT weather!! Gotta love those fresh figs you had!! So yummy.
Sounds like you had an amazing trip! 🙂
Wow you certainly have me sold on a future wine country trip! My husband and I love to travel and try to do as much traveling as we can before kids. After seeing just how much traveling you’ve done this year, it would be great to see a post on how you budget and plan for these vacations! It would be great to see how you and Matt make it work in your lifestyle; there must be a few tricks I could steal!
such beautiful pictures!!! looks like an absolute paradise of a vacay 🙂
I love Cline’s wines, but had a similar experience at their tasting room. It was buggy, hot, and way too crowded. I’m sad that you had the same experience. Looks like the rest of your trip was awesome!
What a great rip recap! I prefer Sonoma over Napa so it was nice to see it highlighted!
I agree with the above comment regarding Cline’s experience…it caters to lots of large groups, really large sometimes. For your next trip, I highly highly recommend Bella Winery – it is gorgeous, a perfect picnic area, and has delicious wine and a great tasting experience. It’s a gem!
What a dreamy vacay!
What a fabulous vacation! I’m not a wine drinker, but the food looks outstanding. Very interested in the Portuguese restaurant since I’m half Portagee. Must let my sister know about this, too. She had the pleasure of visiting Portugal several years ago.
Hi Kath! Longtime reader, but had to make my first comment since we live just outside wine country! I must have been right down Silverado Road from you when you were at William Hill! Looks like you had a fabulous trip, and glad it wasn’t affected by the earthquake, so I hope you don’t mind if I share with your readers a link to the Bank of Napa Relief Fund, which is connecting donors to local relief efforts: http://www.thebankofnapa.com
It probably wasn’t apparent from the places you visited, but those most affected were small, independent wineries, many who are still assessing their damage. You can read more about the issues at hand here: http://www.sfgate.com/wine/article/Small-wineries-suffer-big-losses-in-Napa-quake-5724465.php
Sorry for the long comment, but hope you’ll share with your readers as many aren’t aware how devastating it was to some of our local businesses, who I know you can sympathize with. Thanks for making our little part of the country look so beautiful on your blog!
William Hill told us a little about the smaller wineries while we were there. Thanks for sharing
Thank you for sharing, Sabrina! I was hoping to get some info on how the earthquake affected the Napa and Sonoma area and I appreciate your details! It’s so unfortunate that the smaller wineries were the most affected. It always seems to be the small, independent locations that are most devastated and not the large wineries with lots of affiliations.
Kath- did you go to any of these smaller wineries or were they still closed? Hopefully William Hill was donating some proceeds since they’re part of the largest exporter of California wine, and it seems they weren’t very affected (thankfully). Did they tell you anything about the impact of the earthquakes on the area? Did you feel the impact as a tourist?
Kath, you’re looking great!
You’ve been in our neck of the woods – so many great places to visit around here in wine country for sure. Most of them I have not seen – I’m allergic to most wines so I don’t try them often. We have wonderful bakeries no matter what direction you go to and many of them are off the beaten path. Does anyone recognize you when you are out and about? Did you visit Bear Republic up in Healdsburg or visit the little town of Hopland (home of first beer pub way back when). Please do a recap of your trip and thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing your trip with us. I want to jump on a plane now.
Those figs! And cheese! And wine! It all looks so delicious and the scenery is just stunning. I have always wanted to see wine country but it was never at the top of my list. In terms of US vacations though it’s now definitely at the top of my list! 🙂
What an amazing trip! All four of you look great!!
I definitely have to take a trip to wine country!
When did you all arrive and leave? Seems like you had quite the trip!!
What kind of cheese was that?
Looks like you lucked out with the weather!
Yay!! I’m so glad you went to La Salette, my fav!! Also glad you hit up Sunflower. Always a great meal even though they took my fav item off the menu (day before roasted veggie and goat cheese omelet). Looks like you had a great trip!!